


The Dead Peoples' Time Travel Club

by Leonawriter



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Time Travel, apart from those two, but they don't really count anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 01:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13493864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: They take it in turns, to go back.Only for short trips, only for something small, taking up as little time and space as they can.They aren't their lives they're tampering with, after all. Not really.





	The Dead Peoples' Time Travel Club

They take it in turns, to go back.

Only for short trips, only for something small, taking up as little time and space as they can. 

They aren't  _their_ lives they're tampering with, after all. Not really.

...

Aerith is the first. 

She wakes up in her room in Elmyra's house in the slums, and it feels  _strange_ to be alive after so long, when she's been a part of the lifestream and the Planet for - has it been that many years?

She takes the time to talk with her mother, because even after meeting Ifalna, Elmyra is  _still_ her mother in all of the ways that count, just as much, and she eats her food, and tends to the flowers and when she leaves for the church, notebook and pencil in a deep pocket in the coat she's wearing, she makes sure to hug the woman before she leaves.

They'll meet again, because everyone always does. 

When she reaches the church she tends to the flowers, and then she writes down the important information in the notebook, explains everything she had always wished she could have known, could have spent more time learning from Ifalna. 

After that, she writes down exactly what she was going to need to  _do_ with that information.

 _Don't be scared,_ she writes, carefully, as clearly as she can.  _Or rather, there's going to be a lot to be scared of, but you're going to have to be brave, and kind, and strong. There are going to be people who need you. Some of them, I know in my future - some of them, they're going to be completely new, and that's just the best of all._

 _Jenova can be stopped,_ she puts down, the strokes of the pencil far too smooth for how she feels her flesh and blood hands shaking.  _She can only win when she's got people alone, and without anyone to hold them back, and when they're giving in to despair. When they're hurting._

 _We can heal them. Not on our own, no, but I showed you some things and other people_ _will bring other things, and together, I'm sure you'll all figure it out._

 _P.S,_ she added at the end, almost as an afterthought.  _The sky really is beautiful. Especially when it's bright and blue and full of clouds, and you can see the birds that you can only just about hear, down here._

And when Aerith stops being Aerith and she is simply Aerith again, she wonders how she came to the church, and worries, but doesn't feel afraid, because if anything she feels  _safer_ than before, and loved, and she basks in that warmth for a while, before noting how the flowers had been tended, and there were several pages of writing in one of her notebooks, in her own handwriting.

 _Don't be scared_ , it says at one point, but it's hard, so hard, when her heart beats hard in her chest and she doesn't know whether to tell her mom or not, because Elmyra got so _worried_ whenever she does something strange, and this is something stranger than usual.

...

Angeal goes next, and looking on as Genesis and Sephiroth trade friendly barbs hurts his heart, after seeing the depths they had both lowered and risen themselves to, not necessarily in that order, all the time.

Had he really never noticed how much Sephiroth had _smiled_ back when they'd been friends? Had it really taken him until... hours, really, hardly even days before his death, to notice how much their absence had  _drained_ him?

Genesis laughs, and it sounds like music, before he bites back with the sharpness of a dumbapple, complete with the aftertaste of sweetness.

Angeal smiles at them, and thinks of Zack, who was still rushing around without any focus, more like all of them than he had any right to be, enough like none of them that he was the safest of them all.

"What does your gut instinct tell you?" he asks Zack later that day, in training.

Zack frowns, and doesn't understand.

"Sometimes," Angeal says, thinking of someone who had been pushed into doing things he shouldn't have had to have done, "you have to look at what you're doing, and listen to what your instincts tell you. And your heart, too." He nods. "That's part of what honour _means_. Having pride in your own decisions."

For once, Zack doesn't just parrot it back, because this is new, and Angeal doesn't know if _he'd_ known this before, either. It's something he'd had to find out the long way round.

"So... it's another kind of focus?"

"A bit like that. But instead of focusing on the enemy, you're focusing on yourself."

He takes a trip to Banora - a mission, really, even though it is an excuse mission - and Lazard allows him to go, even though it didn't really require a First, let alone Angeal, because it meant going home, and that was important.

He felt like he both knew and trusted Lazard far more than he should, and just a little less than he'd like, now. The Lazard he knew in the Lifestream was someone he got along with fairly well; this one hadn't gone through all of that, though.

What he doesn't do, is go to see his mother. Memories of seeing her dead body are still far too clear, and she still found it difficult to talk to him, whenever they drifted close enough.

Instead, he knocks politely on the door of Genesis' parents' house, and while they are clearly surprised, they do still let him in.

He used to think that the way they looked at him was entirely because he and Gillian had been from the poorest part of the village, that he had stolen from the other dumbapple trees, that he wasn't good enough to be Genesis' friend, somehow.

He knew better, now. He recognised the way they glanced at each other and then at him as  _wariness_ , knowledge, and... fear.

"I know," he says bluntly. They stare at him in shock. He carries on. "About Genesis, and about me. I'm probably going to forget soon, but I'm leaving notes just in case anyway." He sighs. "I've got one question for you. Both of you. And answer honestly, or not at all."

The three of them sit at the table, and Genesis' parents wait while he gathers his thoughts, how to phrase this in just the right words. Genesis might know the words, if it weren't his own parents, if it were some sort of fiction he wasn't so caught up in. But this was the way things were, and if he wanted things to work out - for Genesis, for Sephiroth, for  _himself_ \- not to mention Zack - he had figure something out.

"Do you..." His eyes flicked around the room. A newspaper clipping from several years ago is framed on the wall. He spots an opened can of Banora White apple juice left where it must had been put, before he'd knocked. Angeal closed his eyes.  _Goddess help me._ "You do love him, don't you."

He wanted it to not have to be a question, but the essence of it remained, because even with everything he had seen and heard since then, he needed to  _know._ To know that they knew. 

"He's my  _son_ ," Mrs. Rhapsodos says, meeting Angeal's eyes with all the intensity of a mother. Her husband puts a hand on her shoulder. "They may have given him to me, I may not have always been a  _good_ mother, but he is not simply a  _scientific assignment_. I never saw Shinra at his bedside when he had fever, and it wasn't Shinra that encouraged him to theatre." The woman sniffed, an affected air taking over that reminded Angeal that this woman was, after all, the wealthiest landowner in Banora. "He would have done better to have gone into theatre," she said, glaring at him again.

He nodded. Slowly. 

Stood.

"Make sure you actually  _tell_ him that, and that he understands, then," he says in a low voice. He realises that he is both afraid and feels somewhat sick to the stomach, knowing what he knows will happen if they don't. "Before it's too late."

He makes it to the door before he takes a deep breath with something he's realised. 

"If he doesn't hear it from me, tell him yourselves. Everything. Monsters aren't loved. That's all human."

He leaves before he can say anything else.

...

Zack doesn't make the trip and go back for himself either, not really. 

He finds Angeal reading a letter, stock still and frozen like he's turned into a statue.

"Genesis left earlier," his old friend and mentor says, and the words come out muted and hollow. "To Banora. He acted all flippant but he's always gotten stressed whenever they want him back there."

Zack sighs, knowing that whatever happens, they can only hope for the best, now.

"You know," he says, "if you want to talk, I'm here. And..." he hesitates, knowing that the subject is a dangerous one for the other First to get involved in, but. Still. "Sephiroth, too."

Better together than alone. Better together than not at all until it was too late for anyone.

Angeal gave him a strange look, one that it took Zack a bit too long to unravel.

"You're like this right now, aren't you," Angeal says, tapping the piece of paper his holding that has his own handwriting on it. "You know things. Like I did in the past few days."

He blinks innocently. "How did you guess?"

He's proud to get Angeal rolling his eyes, even if there isn't a smile there yet. It's a start.

"You're too focused, for one. The Zack I know can never be that quiet for that long. Or sit still, either."

Zack smiles, and maybe it's the same kind of smile he used to give Cloud, while they were on the road and running back to Midgar, to Aerith. Full of sadness and optimism.

"You know," he says, the first thing he's said in his voice and felt like he's not making any effort to hide the fact that he's actually  _older_ than Angeal is right now, "I once told a friend... that SOLDIER is a den of monsters." It hurt to see Angeal flinch. More, to know that it was his own words, that had brought that on. "But that doesn't mean we're the monsters here. We're just doing the best we can with what we've got."

"Well, who  _are_ the monsters, then? From some of the things I've been reading, we're pretty damn close."

And wasn't  _that_ an expression he had way too much experience dealing with? Morbid amusement. Dark humour. 

"Hojo," Zack said firmly, looking away, anywhere but facing Angeal, or looking in his eyes. "Hollander. The President."

Angeal's expression, when Zack finally looked back up, showed what he thought of that idea, scientists and directors and influential rulers all, but he didn't disagree, either.

When he heads down to Sector Five, and makes Angeal promise - that was a  _promise_ , which couldn't be broken, and he'd even written it down to remind himself if Angeal conveniently 'forgot' - to go with him next time.

Aerith is both younger and just as he remembers her, in her blue and white sundress, when he walks through the doors this time, instead of going through the ceiling. He lets himself go after taking the time to appreciate how alive she is and how amazing.

Zack comes to, hearing a friendly voice calling out to him, and at first he thinks it's his mother, or an angel, but she laughs him off.

"You chose a good place to faint," she says, teasing lightly and not letting him deny it. "Though it's good I caught you before you stumbled into the flowers."

...

They all know the moment Sephiroth changes, because one moment he's going over paperwork, bored as he's ever been, and the next Genesis and Angeal know, he's rearing back in his chair, papers flying, green eyes flaring.

The two Firsts share a look, having every right to be worried, given what little they  _do_ know about these futures that their other selves had been through, and follow. 

Or, they try to. 

The General vanishes, and isn't seen again for another several  _days._  Which then proceeded to carry on for nearly two _weeks_.

Genesis wears a hole in the carpets of several rooms, and can be found in Lazard's office whenever he hasn't been sent off on a mission. He had taken the news from his parents badly, at first - said that he never wanted to see them again, said that he wanted to quit Shinra to be an actor, said that he'd fly off on a journey of his own, perhaps. It had become easier with time, however, catching Angeal's eye and knowing that there was  _understanding_ there. 

Well, that and the girlfriend that Angeal's puppy had somehow picked up off of the slums, who somehow had all of them wrapped around her little finger by now. Zack especially so, though Angeal would talk with her for  _hours_ about horticulture, and even Genesis wasn't immune to her charms when she admitted she liked a few of the same books he had read, even if she hadn't managed to finish LOVELESS yet.

The first signs of Sephiroth's influence are subtle, and yet there is nothing else it could possibly be. 

The president was assassinated in Junon. Shinra is reporting it as the act of an anti-Shinra terrorist organisation, although both Genesis and Angeal know full well that their strategy could never have involved the deaths of so many of their operatives, or the tell-tale sign of a long katana through the President's body.

They wait, and Sephiroth isn't listed killed in action simply because he's  _Sephiroth_ , but also because Genesis and Angeal plead with Lazard to give them more time. 

They had come back, after all. Maybe it had only been a few hours for some, but it had been  _days_ for others, and they could not give up hope.

Because if they did, what they would be left with was the idea that their friend was now  _gone_.

Reactor technicians find Hojo's body trapped inside a tube full of mako, several days dead by the time they get him out. Zack passes on that apparently a few of the techs and Seconds who'd been there threw up either immediately, or the moment they left the reactor so they'd not contaminate the scene even more.

It's another three days before Sephiroth winds up back at the Shinra Building, and it's hard  _not_ to see how off-kilter he is. 

Then again, apparently he'd been dropped off a short distance from Rocket Town, and had needed to call in, in order to gain transport back to Midgar. Without any memory of how he had found himself there.

It was probably a good thing the company was in such turmoil over the deaths of two of their highest ranking members in such short notice; Rufus was sliding into place with all the smugness of a teenager who felt he knew better how to run a company than the entire board of adults combined, and with Hollander nowhere to be seen ever since Genesis had lost his temper with the man and nearly set his entire lab alight, the science department was still figuring out their leadership as well, because since everyone was so focused on the reshuffling, Sephiroth's disappearance and abrupt reappearance was barely an afternoon on the systems.

Unsurprisingly, it's Genesis who breaks the silence about the truth first. Which Sephiroth does not believe, not at first. But then Angeal puts in a few words, and Zack brings up the possibility that it might help if Sephiroth went to see Aerith too.

Sephiroth remains troubled all of the journey there, and even into the church itself.

They don't realise why, until he asks them if they had also been the recipients of a PHS mail to themselves, and then asks for a second opinion on the short message.

_Your life will always end with Strife, unless you find Strife first._

They each hold pieces of the puzzle, and it's much like five blind people trying to figure out what a Behemoth is with only their hands.

Out of them all, despite their influence, it's Zack who figures it out first, coming running into Angeal like a Tonberry was hot on his heels. He hasn't changed much, since his promotion to First. He's still the same excitable puppy that follows Angeal around as ever.

"Strife! Angeal, it's a  _person!_ Not only that, but he's a Cadet, well, he's in the Infantry right now - I heard one of the others call out to a 'Cadet Strife', and when I went over because it seemed like the kid was having a hard time, he said his name was  _Cloud."_ As if that first name had all the importance in the world. And perhaps it did. "He's got blue eyes and blond hair that looks like a chocobo's sat on his head, and he's from  _Nibelheim._ "

Sephiroth wonders what he should do with this information. He could, in theory, end this 'Strife' before Strife ended his own life; but the difficulty there was, when he had heard what his...  _supposedly future self_... had done in his absence, well.

He couldn't honestly say that he mourned the deaths. Not the President, who he had to blame for so much, if what he had heard was true, and not Hojo, who would see him become a monster and worse.

What he was unable to forget, however, was the sickening feeling he'd had upon waking on the road to Rocket Town. As though something  _wrong_ had gotten into his system, and it had taken more than throwing up and dry heaving on the roadside to purge it from his system, shaking all the way back to Midgar, still feeling tremors every so often until he had come back from Aerith's church that one day.

Lazard is in his office when Sephiroth goes to find him. The Director of SOLDIER's eyebrows raise slightly at his request, surprised as to why their esteemed General, absence notwithstanding, would have interest in a simple cadet.

"I believe he has potential," is all the explanation he gives. 

Potential for what, though, he leaves open to interpretation. 

Sephiroth likes to believe,  _potential to change everything. Potential to end it before it begins, if nothing else works, and if I can trust my own words._  

And perhaps, if precautions were unnecessary, a new sparring partner.

**Author's Note:**

> At one point I'd thought of adding Genesis in, and maybe Cloud too, but then I decided to just keep it to the Dead People Club. I think it works better that way.
> 
> Slightly inspired by my 'Someone Else's Future' story. But expanded on.
> 
> EDIT: Some extra bits that I didn't have time to add before - future!Sephiroth wasn't meant to be there, and he gatecrashed. The others would have given warnings if he'd been planned. He also planned on doing more, wreaking more havoc and destruction, but didn't realise he was on limited time.


End file.
